Weekend Roundup – UPDATED

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

I hope you all have had a pleasant weekend.  Ol’ Robbo’s got a few minutes before he needs to pull out the butterflied chicken breast marinating in the fridge and stuff it with prosciutto and bleu cheese before popping it on the grill, so how about a little of this and that?

♦  Yesterday as I was mowing the back yard, I noticed where a section of bark had crumbled away from the trunk of the largest of the maples back there, revealing some rayther heavy termite damage.  What does one do in such situations?  Can “tree doctors” get rid of the pests?  Do I just need to go ahead and have the thing taken down?  I know I need to do something, otherwise Ma Nature will take care of things in her own messy way.  (It can’t quite hit the house if it falls, but it very much would hit our fence and the neighbor’s shrubbery.)

♦  Reading a story about the California Gold Rush, I came across a quote from a letter by one Louisa Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, the wife of a doctor who moved out to the gold-fields in the earlies.  Writing under the pen-name of “Dame Shirley”, she sent a series of them to family and friends Back East in 1851-1852.  Just on a hunch, I checked over to the devil’s website and found that, indeed, they are readily available.  I’ll let you know what I think of them.  (I just love this kind of thing – original source material, that is.)

♦  I’ve already received an email circular from my cousin decrying any resistance to taking whatever WuFlu vaccine is shoved on the public as the work of unpatriotic, psychotic “anti-vaxxers” who selfishly care nothing for the health of the people around them.  Sigh.

♦  I drive so little these days that I keep forgetting La Wrangler’s registration and inspection are now way overdue.  I hope the cops are understanding if and when they pop me for it.  (I still am travelling on the same tank of gas I put into her back in early March, by the bye.)

♦  Remember the kitten Ol’ Robbo somehow got saddled with recently?  (I’ll tell you how it came about in a separate post.)  We’ve started bringing her out on the porch in the presence of Decanter Cat, who so far as made growling noises but has shown no disposition to attack.  The kitteh is still pretty skittish but today let me hold and pet her.  (It has been noted many times that Ol’ Robbo has a singular talent for attracting cats and crazy people, and this just seems to support that.)  Perhaps assimilation will go more smoothly than I feared, but we still need to see what happens when Decanter Dog takes notice of her.

Whelp, I reckon that’s enough for now.  Time to go see about dins.

Post Nom-Noms UPDATE:  I haven’t made that stuffed chicken recipe in a while, for some reason or other, and had forgotten how good it is.  I put it up here last summah but cut n’ paste the relevant part of the post below for your convenience.  For those who don’t recall, the original recipe comes from a cookbook the Old Gentleman put together back in the day, to which Ol’ Robbo has made a few modifications.  I present you both the prototype and my upgrades.  One new addendum – If you’re grilling, you can prepare the thing on a sheet of tinfoil with the sides rolled up and then just put the tinfoil down on your grill.  It’ll save you a lot of cleanup.

First, the Old Gentleman’s original recipe:

Ingredients:  Chicken breasts; slices of prosciutto; 1 tbs. Worchestershire sauce; 2 tbs. lemon juice; 2 tbs. butter; any blue cheese (Gorganzola, bleu, Saga, etc.)

Preparation:  Insert a sharp knife into the thick end of each breast and cut a lengthwise pocket carefully, making it as wide as possible without puncturing the sides.  Wrap pieces of cheese in prosciutto slices and insert into pockets, sealing openings with a toothpick.  Heat Worchestershire and lemon and add butter to melt.  Grill chicken over coals, basting frequently with the sauce.

Now, Robbo’s modifications:

First, don’t fool about with cutting pockets.  Instead, butterfly the breast.  Also, use a meat hammer to (carefully) flatten each side of it out.  The advantages are that you can get a whole lot more stuffing in and that the chicken itself cooks more thoroughly through.  (If you’re grilling – see below – you’ll want to make sure and lock down the flap tightly with two or three toothpicks and to be very careful when you flip it over.)

Second, regarding the sauce, the Old Boy’s proportions regarding the ingredients are correct, but obviously you may need to adjust the actual amounts depending on how many breasts you’re doing.  Now here’s the thing:  Don’t wait until you’re cooking to start adding the sauce.  Instead, make it up a couple hours ahead of time and let the chicken marinate in it in the fridge until you’re ready to go.  You can lay the breast outer side down in the marinade and just brush some over the inner side.  I suppose because of the butter, it clings very well once brushed on.  True, things get a little messy when you’re adding layers of proscuit and cheese and folding the breast over on itself, but it’s worth it.

I think the problem with the original recipe is that it leaves the chicken to filling ratio too high, and also that the marinade has no real time to penetrate. When I tried it that way, it seemed to me to turn out rayther bland.  (To be fair, Youngest at least thinks my modifications make the meat too strong, but she says that about all my cooking.  Snowflake!)

Oh, and a final tip:  As for actual cooking, an alternative to grilling if it’s too hot/cold/rainy outside is to bake your chicken in the oven at 350 degrees for forty-five minutes.  The only downside to this is that baked chicken never looks as aesthetically pleasing as does grilled.

So there you have it.  Easy-peasy and delicious!